


The waiting

by Veelitann



Series: The Heart of Paladins [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Comfort, Injured Lance, M/M, Talking, break after the battle, but they're bad at talking, keith is just so cute, shiro is lost, silent chatting, so much feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2017-01-30
Packaged: 2018-09-20 22:17:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9518405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Veelitann/pseuds/Veelitann
Summary: They're back. They did it. But Lance is still in that blue healing tube, and Shiro definitely can't take it, and Keith doesn't know how to comfort his friend.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hey I'm here again!  
> Third part, a small one, a small break in which we have Shiro and a little part of him after what happened! That's short but well...We need it, right? 
> 
> Enjoy <3

"You're still here?" 

Shiro started a little at the familiar voice. The large and circular room was quite dark by now, lights slightly shut down for what was now hours, and the silence was what had surrounded him for too long. He sighed, turning his gaze to Keith who was slowly coming to face the big glassy tube with him. 

"Staying here won't make him awake faster," Keith continued after a moment. 

"I know." 

Shiro's voice was low, a bit rough, and Keith remembered how strong his tone was, how his screams were terrible, how he was desperate, during Lance rescue. His throat was probably still a little damaged, the man wasn't one to raise his voice so often after all. 

"But..." 

Keith slide an eye to the side to observe Shiro's features. He looked tired -he always looked like he was lacking some hours of sleeping, but it was different today. Surely he hadn't slept after their return to the castle, and his eyes were mostly focusing on the blue tube were Lance's body was floating in that space liquid. Around his body, there were all those bandages, some particular points redened with blood getting through the thin white fabric. 

"Keith," he murmured and the young man raised his eyes again to meet Shiro's. 

"Shiro?" 

The man knew what was behind the simple replying, imitating his way to say his name. It was a question way deeper than anyone could ever figure out by just hearing Shiro's name, and he suddenly felt his jaw clench at his own behaviour. For hours now, he had barely talked to anyone. Even Keith. It wasn't him, it wasn't his way of being. Denying others wasn't what he would do, in any case, in any situation. 

Sighing along with a deep breath, Shiro ran a metalic hand over his face. The cold fingers always made him shiver, the simple gesture reminding him quickly what was his reality. Their reality, he should even say. 

Keith wasn't one to talk too much if he hadn't something to say. With just that, he was so different from Lance. 

Or... 

Not that much? 

"Shiro?" Keith insisted a little, eyes frowning a little at him. 

But Shiro only shook his head, giving a small smile to the young man. Keith didn't know how to act in a situation like this one and Shiro could see it clearly. 

"Did something happen?" 

"Are there things that you'd wish for but you know you'll never get?" Shiro said in a rush. He'd talked so fast that he didn't have time to really think about what he was saying. But Lance's words still echoed in his ears, from his helmet, mouth barely moving on the screen and-- 

Keith blinked a little at it, staring at Shiro's sudden intense and serious gaze. "Uh? I don't get it...What's the question for?" 

_Of course_. Shiro came back to his contemplation of the tube. "If you were about to die...No, actually _dying_ and only one person to talk to...What would you say?" 

He could see Keith's grimace. The boy had finally gotten what it was about and the topic wasn't truly appealing for him, not as if it was for Shiro. But the man supported his annoyed look, waiting for something. 

And somehow, Keith knew that Shiro was looking for an answer he couldn't just give that easily. 

"I don't know," he said with honesty. "If I had to say it now, well, I'd probably thank you for everything, I guess? Don't make that face, you know what I mean." Keith raised a hand up, fingers foraging in his own dark hair to scratch the top of his head a little, thoughtful. "But..." 

Shiro slightly lifted an eyebrow. Usually, Keith would put every thoughts of his about Shiro, their life before the Kerberos mission, their life now, on a pedestal and nothing would change his mind. 

This time, Keith had put a " _but_ " to all of this. To everything that had made the both of them. Cautiously, the young man went on, eyes focusing on the healing cabin. The way his pupils were slightly moving were the only indication of how he was scanning Lance's wounds from the way the bandages were covering his slender body. 

"...I'm not sure I would still be myself when facing death," he admitted with a low, soft voice. 

Shiro exhaled slowly, and Keith's attention was back on him. "What happened?" he asked again, more gently. He stepped closer, let his hand reach Shiro's metalic arm, and it cooled the man's mind a little. Keith had never been afraid by how he changed after all those months at the Galra's hands and the stubborn yet affective way of being Keith showed every passing day was a blessing for him. It was like having a family again. 

"I don't know how to say it," Shiro murmured. 

The breathy words, filled with despair and pain, were still lingering in his mind. Lance's lost gaze on him, but not so much, hardly focusing on anything in the end. 

Facing death directly, Shiro knew that no one could stay still, hanging onto that resolutness they'd settled to go through life. Lance wasn't different. 

"You look shaken," Keith stated. Shiro only shrugged at it, lips drawn in a thin line for a few seconds. 

"That's the second time." 

Keith remained silent this time. It was obvious that Shiro needed some time to bring his thoughts back together, to get back to his normal self after what had just happened. 

"I barely knew him the first time it happened," Shiro continued. "But...You know how it feels, right?" 

A shiver ran along his spine, and Keith nodded slowly with a smooth gaze to Shiro. Then, to the body in the glass tube. Sometimes, small bubbles of air leaving from Lance nose and mouth under the respiratory mask. 

They probably all remembered that day, when Lance had been the closest to death and the first one to use the healing cabin not only for comfort but to stay alive. Keith had hold his body for a moment. He knew how tight his waist could feel between their hands, how narrow his shoulders were really when he wasn't moving around like a dick and barking with so many useless movements. 

"Yeah..." 

"Coran doesn't know when he'll be ok again." 

It was heartbreaking but Keith didn't say anything about it. Watching Shiro so undone, even if the man was acting mostly like he always did, saying sentences that didin't match one with another, sounded like it was the most terrible thing that could have happened. Keith was aware of it all. He knew Shiro enough to see through all of this. 

He knew how Shiro hadn't accept the first time Lance had ended in the healing tube, reproaching so much to himself even when he wasn't to blame. Not more than another at least. The Galras were the ones in fault. Shiro _knew_ it. 

"Soon," Keith said. "Ok, Shiro?" 

Under his hand, the metalic arm was slightly shaking, and he hold back a sigh. What else could he do for Shiro? What else could they do for _Lance_? Shiro's worst fear was all about losing everything again. And their team, at the moment, since months now, was his today's everything. 

"Ok," the man breathed. 

"We just have to wait, right?" 

"Mh." 

Keith ran his hand a bit higher, until his fingers get a hold of the human part of Shiro's arm, and squeezed the muscle tightened under the dark grey fabric in a reassuring motion. 

"Keith?" 

"Yeah?" 

"Thank you..." 

The young man let out a small laughter, squeezing the arm even more. "You're welcome, Shiro. Don't think too much for now, ok?" 

Shiro nodded. He needed to talk, Keith could see it and in times like this one, he was mortified not to be able to have Lance's abilities for speacking so much with no ideas of what he was even saying, mostly with stupid topics and nonsense. He swallowed he small lump in his throat at how tense the thick muscles were uner his hand. 

"Lance..." he started, paused to think a little, not more than one or two seconds but Shiro was already hanging at his lips. "Lance will be ok. He's _always_ ok, after all, right?" 

Shiro let out a small sigh again, and Keith added. "You should go get some rest--" 

"Later," he murmured. "I just...Well, I need to stay a little longer, I guess...? You see..." 

"I see," Keith only replied with a smal smile. He wouldn't be one to insist and knew for sure that, sometimes, they needed time to recollect. "Meet us for dinner, okay?" 

"Mh." 

Keith had been gone for a while when Shiro's shoulders started to relax a little. Staring at Lance's feet for so much time now, he dared raise his gaze up the body, watching the lines drawing the thin muscles, tracing the bandages with his eyes and he suddenly stepped closer to the Altean tube, hands flat on it. 

Lance's face looked so peaceful that it was almost unbearable, scary. _Dreadful_. It wasn't Lance either. None of all he'd seen until now was Lance, in any case. Not the real one. He knew it. He could _feel_ it. The boy had been hiding himself in such a tight and protective cocoon, made out of laughters, bad puns, weird ideas, too much talking, that none of them had ever taken the time to really care about what Lance was really _made of_. 

Built with fear, loneliness. Raised with _love_. 

Shiro gulped a little at his own thoughts. Even if it was somehow lost in that crackling of the radio, he'd heard it.

_"You..."_

The desperate moan that escaped his throat took him a little by surprise as his hands turned into fists, his forehead meeting the cool surface of the almost blue glass.

Lance needed _him_. 

He knew what that could mean. 

He knew. 

What he didn't know was his own ability to take it, to deal with it as good as Lance did. He didn't know what to _do_. They couldn't really talk about it. After all, Lance probably wouldn't remember it, and it was something said on the way to _death_ like Keith had told him. But... 

He sighed heavily, listening to the soft sound of the bubbles coming out from Lance in the water. 

"Please, Lance, come back soon--"

**Author's Note:**

> So well!  
> Again, See you for the next? 8D  
> Thank you all for the kind comments, I love you so much ! <3


End file.
